INTRODUCTION:
This is a project component / department of the Ecumenical Mission for Peace and Development Foundation (EMPED-FOUNDATION) created to introduce the communities to the fundamental principles of Human Rights Concepts and practice at all levels.
It examines the international and national implementation of human rights standards to target communities, particularly the rights of women, children and other vulnerable groups. It designs programmes for community and civic education for the rural communities as well as the urban poor living out of the legal system for lack of means and resources.
This department has an Observer Status with the National and International Human Rights Commission on people’s rights; Suffice to add here that the department acts in consultancy, in national and international human rights documentation to wit, CEDAW
reporting, issue of Asylum papers, Recommendation papers (assorted), facts-finding in
human rights issues, human rights projects designing, conflicts analysis and mediation.
GOAL:
Establish a human rights culture in target communities through awareness campaigns and sensitization of stakeholders of criminal justice.
OBJECTIVES:
-Promotes human rights through the processes of educational programmes on (human rights concepts) to bring disadvantaged groups to the awareness of their fundamental rights;
-Enhance non-state assistance in human rights services to (the needy) desperate and other disadvantage groups– the role of human rights NGOs / CSOs.
-Update the knowledge of individuals, NGOs / CSOs to enable them to understand how/ when violations are committed and where to adequately redress them.
-Enhance pro-legal counseling and pro-bono services as well as peace advocacy as alternatives to litigation and conflicts in communities.
-Enhance networking - participatory approach to identify responsibilities the Government has to protect people’s rights as identified in human rights treaties that has been signed and ratified.
ACTIVITIES:
-Carries out sensitization, education and information through mass communication media, seminars, workshops as well as training of trainers in human rights.
-Provide immediate assistance in cases of arrests, detention, disappearance, torture and similar situations;
-Secure prompt bails and safe human life from poor detention conditions;
- Provide accessible justice to desperate prison inmates;
-Offers pro-legal counseling and pro-bono services especially in cases of delayed and unfair trials / justice.
- Consults on human rights education, promotion and protection;
- Research and train on skills of non-violent conflict transformation;
- Carries out facts-finding (seek redress and remedies for clients) to ensure that human rights violations do not go unnoticed and unpunished;
- Sensitize various police stations, military posts or other detention centres on issues of human rights to ascertain the safety of the detainees as well as filing petitions for habeas corpus, etc;
-Raise public awareness (publication of human rights violations) for the public to mount protests against violations to attract national / international attention with the aim of stopping such violations.
- Decongest prisons;
- Practically assist detainees to enforce their fundamental human rights by providing writing materials for effective communication to respond to their legal needs.
-Monitor criminal trials in various courts to foster processes of bail papers, bail conditions, judgments / rulings and eventual liberation from prison.
Departmental head, Mr. Shey Cosmas
Tel: [237] 909 39 29
Email: sheycos@yahoo.ca
